New World Notes

Where in Second Life is a Cat Named Dim Sum? Fun Idea for an SL Blog... Great Idea for an SL-Based Tablet Game

Where's Dim Sum is a fun new SL blog with a cute premise -- each post is a screenshot of an SL location, in each of which is a tiny white cat called Dim Sum. It's a fun way to present new and/or interesting SL locations by Opal Lei, a longtime SLer who also wrote an SL-inspired e-book, conveniently enough, Love, Like Dim Sum.

Basically Where's Dim Sum turns Second Life screenshots into a hidden object mini-game, a casual sub-genre that's huge on the web and mobile right now. (Especially on tablets, which are ideal for hands-on browsing of beautiful images.) So here's a free idea for game developers:

Pathfinding Demo for Drone War, FPS Game in Second Life

Drone War is a multiplayer FPS game in Second Life, and as you might have guessed, it involves shooting, well, robot drones. Developed by Serigo Delacruz, it's going to be a direct beneficiary of the upcoming pathfinding tools Linden Lab will release soon. "I hope to implement these tools in my game 'Drone War'," Sergio tells me, "to create a complex combat system. Enemies will try to attack or hide if their health status is critical" So if it works as promised, the pathfinding system will make the Drones in Drone Wars more drone-like. Another upcoming application of pathfinding: A driving game. If you know of other upcoming projects that use the new pathfinding tools, please post links Comments!

First Rule of SL Tank Club: Let's Talk About SL Tank Club

Sure there's an online world called World of Tanks, but I bet you can't decorate your M1 Abrams pink and go cruising down the highway running over noobs in it, let alone cram into an undersea air tube, or pull over at a diner. But the Syzygy Tank Club is in the SL sim of Vacit (SLurl at this link), and that's just what they do. This chuckle-filled machinima also comes with a pretty impressive depiction of mesh-based SL vehicles and visuals like dynamic shadow and depth of field, too. Homepage of the Tank Club here.

Linden Lab on Linden Realms: It's Not For Growing the User Base, It's for Established SLers and SL Developers

I wondered if Linden Realms, the new SL game area launched by Linden Lab last week, which has been widely promoted by the company to the media, was a bid to grow SL's user base. I asked the Lindens that question, and got this reply from project lead Rhett Linden:

"Linden Realms is more about giving everyone something fun to do and the new tools we're going to release than about growing the user base. We hope that folks will have some fun playing Linden Realms – exploring the game, dodging the monsters, collecting crystals (oh, and earning some L$ while they do, by the way), and completing the quests. And I think users will have some fun thinking about the experiences they will be able to create with new tools that we'll eventually be releasing to creators."

So there you go. I still think it would be a great space in SL to drop new users into; or at the very least, drop some of them there, to see if doing so increases retention. That said, I do hope it gives SL developers ideas for their own projects; I think the auto-loading HUD is going to to be a killer addition to their tool chest. But let me put the question to developers reading this directly: Has Linden Realms inspired you to take your projects into new directions?

New SL Site Inspired by Alice: Madness Returns Videogame is Strange, Beautiful... and a Good Place to Buy Sex Beds

Crowdore is the sim where you can find a new Second Life site [click here for direct teleport] that's inspired by Alice: Madness Returns, the new videogame that's a sequel to the dark and surreal 2000 hit, American McGee's Alice, which was basically a game-based retelling of Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland story, but with a goth, knife-wielding edge. (American is the lead designer's name.) Honour Mcmillan has a lovely photographic tour of the impressive-looking site, which is actually in an Adult-rated region, and is also a dark, foreboding place to buy virtual sex peripherals:

I didn't examine them too closely but can report that (according to the signs) the sex beds are Xcite compatible.

I almost think American might approve. See more pics and write-up by Ms. McMillan here.

Play Angry Birds in Second Life (Kinda Sorta)!

This is fun: SLangry Birds, a Second Life parody of everyone's favorite game of self-exploding avian jihadists versus legless fort-making bacon. Watch Chantal Harvey and friends play their version of Angry Birds in fully immersive 3D:

The SLangry Birds set is actually just a set, built on Chantal's sim for the sake of this machinima (with elements from the original game incorporated in post-production.) But still, she tells me, "I get avatars coming in all the time to play!" So she's left the SLAngry Birds set up for at least a little while, where you can act out your own Angry Birds fantasies. Here's how:

See Me Speak About Avatars and Race at SXSW 2011!

This coming Sunday at 11am Texas time I'll be speaking about avatars and real life race at SXSW, on a panel called, appropriately enough, "E-Race: Avatars, Anonymity And The Virtualization Of Identity", along with Professor Lisa Nakamura of University of Illinois and Jeff Yang of the San Francisco Chronicle. Of course I'll be talking about topics on race in Second Life (along with other online worlds), and if you're here at SXSW, I hope to see you there. (But it is at 11am, and after several nights of hard late night partying, I understand if you can't make it, rockstar.) Even if you can't come, I would love to get your input, dear readers: What aspects of this topic interest you most?

Sim Deathwatch: Numbakulla, Landmark Myst-Style Adventure Game in Second Life, Closes Due to Tier Fees (UPDATED: Donations Delay Death by 30 Days)

This news un-ambivalently sucks: Numbakulla, a groundbreaking, landmark Second Life sim that hosted an ambitious, Myst-style adventure game, has closed, Daniel Voyager reports. Once promoted by Linden Lab as a prime example of game development in Second Life, the sim's owners, reports Mr. Voyager, "announced that they can no longer cover the tier in Second Life. The team may move over to OpenSim Grid in the near future but it’s not been officially confirmed yet." New World Notes reviewed the game back in 2009, but I vividly remember writing about it in 2005, when I was still a Linden.

Barring some dramatic changes, this is a grim example of a pattern we're likely to see in coming years: Linden Lab depends on sim owners who are willing to pay thousands of US dollars a year for virtual land, but the market for that offering is waning, and cannot be replenished. Without massive user growth or growth of the internal Second Life economy (which would enable sim owners to offset their tier fees), expect more such sim closings soon.

Update, 3/11: In post Comments, Numbakulla co-owner Caliandris Pendragon reports that the sim "has been saved for another month, due to the generosity of some donors who sent me large amounts of Lindens." So if you haven't seen it yet, do so soon.

"Urban Royale": Pretty Cool Example of Second Life Gamer Machinima (Yes, It's Really Second Life)

When I first saw this machinima, called "Urban Royale", I seriously thought it was shot in a Battlefield map, or another high-end FPS game -- but no, this is Second Life, showing itself fairly capable of capturing some visually tricked out, rock 'em sock 'em gamer action at a decent frame rate:

Directed by Eric Boccara, it's not necessarily meant to a linear narrative (I'm largely oblivious on who the hell's supposed to be gunning for who), but it's full of striking visuals I rarely see in SL machinima. (Watch 1:15, 2:50, 3:20, 3:45, and 4:40 for some samples.)

"The idea to do an action over-the-top, weird, but funny type machinima came to my head when my friend Shakeno Tomsen showed me this awesome Animation Override which had all sorts of features for tactical combat," Mr. Boccara explains. (Links to the AOs and props are in the YouTube description.) The actors are friends of his, many from Natural Selection Studios, an SL machinima group founded by Bebop Vox.

Getting such high quality visual footage from Second Life took some extra effort, which Boccara explains after the break:

SimBall, a New Gravity-Defying Second Life Hoverboard Game Which Auto-Posts Scores to the Web

This looks like a cool new game: SimBall, developed in part by a gentleman named RobsterRawb Jaxxon, sort of like Rollerball, but on hoverboards, with frenetic gravity-defying action. (When Second Life's servers are cooperative, that is.) Just as cool, the results of each match are automatically posted to the game's website. Clever way of keeping score, and encouraging players to jump into a match (since the SLurl for a particular game is also posted too.) "The data (score, players, location) is sent to an email that is filtered, forwarded and automaticly posted to the Wordpress site," Jaxxon tells me. To start playing in-world, you can visit the main SimBall area: Direct SLurl at this link.

Update, 8:40PM: Corrected the credit on SimBall's creation. Jaxxon is a developer on the team; the game was created by Vetox, lead developed by Sean Martin.